Oh so pretty

At least a few readers should have seen this by now. It’s a new theropod fossil from the Solnhofen of Germany and inevitably features some champion UV work by Helmut Tischlinger (who provided these photos). It’s odd to be putting this up when the paper describing this critter is not even out yet, but these photos are on a number of blogs and all over the German press so I don’t feel that I’m really doing the authors a disservice (and indeed I have permission to post them). So enjoy the beauty of this animal and keep a look out for the publication.

What a spectacular fossil! The skull appears to be rather large relative to the body (based only on my mental image of theropod specimens I’ve seen). The UV image is remarkable too. Is the mineralization aragonite?

No idea bout the mineralisation, but yeah the head does look big. I think it’s a juvenile (well, non adult) as the pelvis doesn’t look fused and note do a few neurocentral arches, though it’s hard to see.

Magnificent. What’s the thinking on why even small theropods possess gastralia but all but the earliest ornithischians seem not to? Simplistically, you’d think that if they provided some sort of evolutionary advantage (say, protection or muscular support) that that would also be an advantage for at least the bipedal ornithischians. Perhaps the different hip structure was a determining factor?

This little guy is currently referred to as “Otto.” Whether, it gets a name or not remains to be seen. Since it is a juvenile it is likely to place more basal than it might actually be (ontogeny discombobulates phylogeny and all), which could make actual phylogenetic placement pretty uncertain (see all the hubbub regarding juvenile dinos and phylogeny in tyrannosaurs lately), which could result in this guy simply getting a specimen name and “cute” nickname for the foreseeable future. Taxonomically that is probably the safest way to go.

Well that really depends on how plastic the ontogenetic characters are and quite how young the specimen. Plenty of characters don’t change during ontogeny (or not much) and of course close to adult they should change little, so it’s entirely practical and reasonable to name things in those circumstances. I don’t know what the authors intend but from what I can see and what I know, I’d imagine it will be named.

As I’ve said on the DML, it looks basically identical to Juravenator to me, though both are juveniles of course. Apparently the authors find both it and Juravenator to be megalosauroids (as reported at the Latin American Congress of Vertebrate Paleontology), which I’ll be interested to read about since they don’t seem that basal to me. But Rauhut does good phylogenetic work, so I suppose we’ll see.

You are not the only person to suggest that……but even Archie was accused of being a fabrication and when stuff turns up at Solnhofen it often looks too good to be true so let us know if you hear anything useful.

Actually didn’t John. I know there’s a whole mess of fossil beds and layers in the basin that are often lumped under the term ‘Solnhofen’ (just as happens with the ‘Jehol’ in China) but I really did think this was a Solnhofen specimen. If not, where is it from?